


Gray Wool

by lirin



Series: Cheryl Cole's Quilt [2]
Category: The Girl Who Owned A City - O. T. Nelson
Genre: Chicago (City), F/M, Future Fic, Librarian - Freeform, Quilting, Sewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 01:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20537735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: Cheryl doesn't remain forever in Glenbard, and her quilt doesn't either.The second half of Cheryl's story that was begun in "Purple Calico".





	1. Grandmother's Fan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Doranwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doranwen/gifts).

It was four and a half years since the founding of Glenbard, and the city that was owned by a girl still stood strong on the hill.

Sixteen-year-old Cheryl Cole still lived in one of the made-over classrooms, though the years of improvements had made it until it scarcely looked like a classroom anymore. The city was fuller than ever; she and her brother Steve now shared their room with three single orphans who had all been less than five when the plague hit. Somehow, they'd managed to survive, and eventually, they'd even managed to make their way from the next town over all the way to Glenbard.

Lisa and the other city leaders were constantly making additions to the city defenses and insisting on frequent drills, for fear of unnamed dangers in the outside world. But as far as Cheryl was concerned, life was good.

She'd taken her three new roommates on as apprentices when they arrived, so now she had seven. Every day after classes were over, she went to the old home ec room, sat down at the teacher's desk, and waited for people to come to her. Citizens of Glenbard came with requests for mending and for new clothes. Almost everything that needed mending was indeed mended, but new clothes were much more rare. If they had a good reason for why they needed it, or if one of her apprentices really wanted to make the item, then Cheryl would give permission. But if she said no, then the only person who could overrule her was Lisa Nelson herself, and that didn't happen very often.

All the apprentices knew how to sew, and they all took a hand in the mending. But many hands made light work, and there was plenty of time for them to develop their own skills as well. Larry and Iris were the most interested in learning how to make clothes, and they'd both gotten quite skilled at it. Beth and "Old Jenny" (who had been at Glenbard since the beginning) had picked up knitting, while Grace and "New Jenny" (who was one of Cheryl's trio of new roommates) were learning crochet. Rachel spent most of her spare time making doilies—Cheryl wasn't sure what Lisa would think of such an impractical project, but then since Cheryl spent a lot of time cutting fabric up into little pieces and then sewing those pieces back together, she wasn't one to comment on practicality.

The four of the old guard had all tried to follow in Cheryl's footsteps and make their own quilts, but she could tell that that wasn't where any of their hearts truly lay. Old Jenny and Larry had scarcely finished half a dozen squares, while Grace's and Beth's quilts still languished on the back of their desks, half finished and forgotten. As for Cheryl, her quilt had grown slowly but surely. She had made each row six squares wide, and she was halfway through the seventh row. She could finish it after this row, or after one more at most—but did she really want it to be finished? She'd been working on this quilt for so long that she couldn't imagine what her life would be like if she wasn't working on it.

When she looked at the quilt, she could see how her seams slowly became more even, and the patterns that she quilted onto the blocks became more and more elaborate. The blocks, too, were more complex as her trust in her skills grew. Currently, she was working on an appliqued "Grandmother's Fan" block. Applique involved sewing all the pieces of the design together and then sewing them onto a plain square block, and it was not particularly practical. She was even planning to use a tiny scrap of lace at the edge of the fan! But as much as the leaders of the city might worry, it wasn't the Dark Ages, and a little bit of impracticality seemed okay.

So she sewed on her patchwork, and she watched her apprentices knit sweaters and socks and sew clothes and crochet doilies, and she expected that they would do very much the same thing every day that week and every day of the weeks to come. And then the next day, a delegation from the King of Chicago appeared at the gates of Glenbard.

* * *

They all trooped to the base of Lisa's tower when they heard the news, all 800 or so children who lived in Glenbard, because who else was there to tell them what to do but the girl who owned the city? Lisa pushed her way through the crowd, telling them not to worry and ordering everyone to battle stations.

The delegation was 100 strong, but they carried a white flag. After a yelled conversation while Lisa stood on the walls, she allowed their leader to enter the city. He spent all night locked away in Lisa's tower room, while his delegation (or should they call it an army? For all they carried a white flag, they still seemed frightening) camped on the high school's old football field.

At breakfast the next morning, Lisa announced that they would all perform their duties as usual that day, and that she would be allowing a dozen—but only a dozen—more of the Chicagoans to enter the city. "If any of my citizens meets our guests, I hope you will be welcoming, as befits our great city," she said. Cheryl wondered how much of that was bluster for the benefit of the listening leader of the delegation. She doubted it mattered; she planned to hole up in the home ec room all day, and she doubted that the dozen interlopers were likely to roam far enough to run into her there.

She was wrong. She had barely resumed working on her Grandmother's Fan block (for all Lisa's instructions to continue life as normal, nobody seemed inclined to bring mending by that day) when somebody knocked lightly on the door frame, and a boy and a girl walked into her classroom. They looked around her age. Maybe a little younger—fifteen at the least—and of course they couldn't be much older because the oldest people in the world were barely starting to turn seventeen these last few months.

"Hi, I'm Keith," said the boy. "This is my sister Lydia. We're here with the delegation from Chicago."

"Um, hi," said Cheryl. "This is my mending shop. But we do all sorts of crafts here. If anybody needs anything sewn, or knit, or whatever, they come to us. This is Larry, Iris, Rachel, Beth, Jenny, Grace, and other Jenny."

"Nice to meet you all," Keith said. "Back in Chicago, I'm a librarian, and Lydia's a cook. I'm sixteen, and she's fifteen."

"I'm sixteen too," Cheryl said. "Did you live in Chicago when the plague happened, or did you move there afterwards?" She kept stitching on the blades of her patchwork fan. Why were they here, and what did they want?

"We lived in Chicago at the time," Keith said. "We'd actually just moved there a few months before that, for my dad's job. We lived in Arkansas before that. We might still have some cousins back there, though I have no idea what happened to them."

Cheryl's needle went up and down, up and down. Keith seemed friendly enough, but he still hadn't said why he was here. She hadn't made small talk with strangers in too long. "Do either of you sew?" she asked.

"Our mom taught me a little bit when I was a kid," Lydia volunteered. "But I've forgotten how."

"She didn't teach me any," Keith said. "But I've been thinking of trying to figure it out. I caught the sleeve of my jacket on a nail a while back, and now the torn bit catches on everything."

All eight skilled menders perked up at this. "Would you like one of us to take a look at it?" Cheryl asked.

"Sure, I guess," he said. He shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her.

The jacket was thick brown corduroy, heavily worn. The edges of the cuffs were nearly threadbare in places, but the worst of the damage was definitely on the left sleeve where the cuff was ripped all the way through. "I could patch this," Cheryl said, "but then the cuffs would be less flexible, which might be a problem for you. This fabric is pretty worn. Eventually, you'll probably want to take off the cuffs completely and put on replacements out of whatever fabric we can find to match, but for now, I can just stitch up the rip and it will catch on things less than it does now." Observant Iris handed Cheryl some brown thread, that she had already though to retrieve from the cabinet. Cheryl threaded a needle and set to work.

"You really know your stuff," Keith said, sitting down on the far corner of her desk and watching her sew.

"Thanks," Cheryl said. "Lisa's been very insistent that we all have to work hard to learn the skills we'll need as adults. It's been a lot of work, since I didn't have much sewing experience before my parents died, and none of my apprentices had any. But I had a couple books, and then mostly we just learned by doing."

"That actually brings us to one of the questions we're supposed to be asking everybody," Lydia said. "Two questions. The first is, how's the food here?"

"That doesn't have anything to do with what Cheryl said," Larry pointed out.

"Yes, but the second question does," Lydia said.

"The food's great," Beth said. Everybody else nodded.

"Yes, there's plenty of it, and it tastes good, and our cooks really know what they're doing by now," Cheryl said.

"They didn't at first?" Lydia asked.

"They were kids and they'd never cooked before," Cheryl said defensively. "How long did it take you to learn?"

"I took a while, too," Lydia said. "I was just asking."

"Second question," Keith broke in quickly. "Do you have enough books?"

"We have a lot of books," Cheryl said.

"A whole library full!" Larry added.

Keith grinned. "So is that enough?"

Lydia poked her brother with her elbow. "My brother's philosophy is that no amount of books is ever enough, because you can always have more," she said.

"Well, I don't exactly have a lot of time to read," Cheryl said, "so I can't say for most of the library. I wish I had time to read more. I was always in the top reading group in every grade in school. But I do think we need more craft books. We have several books of knitting and crochet patterns, and a couple books about sewing, and a couple of needlework encyclopedias. The only book we have about patchwork and quilting is the one we brought from my house, that my mom had. I could really use another book of patchwork patterns, but other books on any sort of craft would also be good. We're trying to learn lots of different types of crafts, so that the city has somebody who knows how to do them in case they're needed." She handed his jacket back to him. "There you go. Hopefully that will let you get a bit more wear out of it. Maybe it will last you until you grow out of it."

"Thanks, I hope it will," Keith said. "Well, when we get back to Chicago, I'll try to see if we have any craft books we can spare, and I'll send them your way. It was nice to meet you all." He waved generally to the room, and then he was gone, with Lydia in his wake. Cheryl stared after him. Chicago was forever away from here. There was no way he would actually send the books. But it was a nice thought.


	2. Dresden Plate

When the delegation left, Lisa announced to the city that she had made an agreement with the King of Chicago (or rather, with the leader of the delegation as the king's representative). It seemed that the King of Chicago did not conquer people by force, but by generous peace terms. All he wanted was an exchange of goods. Not tribute—Lisa made it very, very clear that that was not the term they would be using. And besides, the King's representative had promised to send supplies to Glenbard, as well as to receive them.

One of the things that were requested as not-tribute was some hand-sewn clothing. Cheryl decided that would be a good use of that lime green silk she'd gotten from Wards years ago and never done anything with. She set Larry and Iris to work on that and anything else they had in mind to make, since they knew the most about sewing clothes from scratch.

As for Cheryl, she sat down at her desk, watched them sew, and worked on another appliqued patchwork block. This one was called "Dresden Plate", and it was just as pretty but less-than-practical as the previous block she had made. Her apprentices interrupted her less often in need of help than they had at first, but it was still slow going. And the citizens in need of mending were back in force, now that the strange Chicago interlopers had left.

So the days passed for a week. The lime green dress was finished—along with some more practical clothing creations—and the Dresden Plate was half quilted, when a truck arrived from Chicago. An assortment of gifts were unloaded from the truck, and then their clothes and the other not-tribute gifts were loaded onto the truck, and it departed to return to Chicago. All very short and sweet.

Cheryl was sitting on her bed that night, getting a last little bit of quilting done on the Dresden Plate block before lights out, when Steve came in. He always came in late these days; he was in charge of looking after one whole wing of people, and everyone kept him very busy. He was holding a pile of books, tied together with twine. "Your boyfriend sent these for you," he said.

Iris, Rachel, and Jenny, who had been giggling about something or other on the beds on the other side of the room, giggled even harder at Steve's greeting. Cheryl had no idea what he was talking about, but she blushed anyway. "I don't have a boyfriend."

"Yeah, I know," Steve said. "But there is a guy in Chicago who thinks highly enough of you to pick some books out just for you." He handed them over.

"Don't be silly, Steve, these aren't just for me, they're for everybody in the mending shop," Cheryl said. "Look, he didn't even get a patchwork book and I told him I especially needed that."

Steve shrugged. "Maybe not. But it's good that people in Chicago are being nice to us. It's better than if they were our enemies."

Cheryl nodded. "Keith and Lydia both seemed nice." She had gotten the twine loose finally, and she flipped through the books. One about weaving—not that they had a loom, but maybe someone in the construction shop could be persuaded to give it a try—two about knitting, a pamphlet of doily patterns, and a sewing encyclopedia. They would all make a very nice addition to their meager craft library, even if none of them were the patchwork book she'd asked for. There was a little burlap bag, crudely stitched, tied to the twine as well. When Cheryl eased it open, a thimble rolled out. It was prettier than Mom's thimble that she had been using all these years, with floral patterns around the base instead of just dots all over. Was it meant for her?

The three girls had wandered over and were looking through the books as well. "Look, Cheryl, it's a note for you!" Iris said.

The piece of paper must have been tucked inside the sewing encyclopedia. Well, that was the book she was most likely to open.

_Dear Cheryl—_

_I'm sorry, I looked all over for a book of patchwork patterns, but the only one we had was already allotted to the Chicago library. I'll keep looking. One of the odd goods shops on my floor had this thimble for trade, and I thought you might like it. I know something so small is easy to lose and you seemed to be using yours constantly while I was there, so maybe having a second one might come in handy._

_I hope the books I was able to find will be of use for you and your apprentices!_

_Best wishes,_

_Keith_

How sweet. Cheryl folded the letter back up, but she didn't put it back inside the sewing encyclopedia. Instead, she slipped it inside the front cover of Mom's patchwork book, which she carried back and forth every day from the home ec classroom to this room, the same as her quilt, so that she would always have them with her if she had to evacuate. She put the thimble in her pocket, and put the rest of the books on the table. "Girls, will you please carry the new books to the mending shop in the morning?" she asked.

The girls agreed, and thankfully didn't ask any questions about Keith's letter. Not that there was anything to be said about it. It was just a normal letter, like any librarian might right to an acquaintance that he was helping. Nothing more than that.

As Cheryl lay there that night, she composed a long reply letter in her head. But Keith's letter had been short and sweet; she had better write something as short as that, or he might read something into it. Did she want him to read something into it? She was one of the oldest people in the world, only a year and a half younger than the very oldest ones; she could have a boyfriend if she wanted to. But Keith was all the way in downtown Chicago, which didn't make for very good boyfriend material for a girl all the way over in what used to be Glen Ellyn. She didn't know anything about him. Well except that he was a librarian, and he liked books, and he was from Arkansas, and he had kind of wavy hair and blue eyes...

The next day, she wrote a long letter back to Keith. If he wanted to read something into it, then he could, and if he didn't, then he wouldn't. It was all the same to her, really.

(That evening, instead of quilting further on the Dresden Plate block, she checked out "Little House on the Prairie" from the library and read it for an hour before lights out. She'd felt embarrassed to have to tell a librarian that she was barely reading, and she wanted to make sure she wouldn't have to do that again.)


	3. Arkansas Star

Cheryl sent her letter on the next truck from Chicago. And on the truck after that, she got a letter back. This time, she waited right by the truck while they were unloading it, so that Steve wouldn't have to deliver her mail for her. She felt awkward enough, writing letters to a boy, without her brother teasing her for it.

Keith's letter was longer this time, even longer than the one she'd written him. He told her about the apartment he shared with his sister, on the twentieth floor of the John Hancock Center. (_You stay in very good shape_, he said,_ climbing that many stairs all the time. Although there's so much going on just in the building, that some weeks I don't even go out. My library is on the fifth floor, though, and fifteen flights are bad enough._) He talked about watching his mom sew in the evenings next to the fireplace while they watched the news. And he talked about his library, and how it kept expanding. He'd set it up inside what used to be a residential apartment, and he'd recently gotten permission to use the adjacent apartment as well. His letter bubbled over with plans for the new space.

Cheryl wasn't sure what to write back. She had never had as many plans as he seemed to have; she'd been happy just working away on her quilt and teaching her apprentices and not making any big strides on anything in particular. But she told him about her quilt, and how Mom had helped her make the first block. She told him about teaching her apprentices, and how some of them had outpaced her. She told him about how wonderful Glenbard was, and how Lisa had saved them all. When she was finished, she had quite a long letter. She folded it up, and went to drop it into Glenbard's brand new "Mail to Chicago" box. Then she stopped, and unfolded it. "P.S." she wrote, "What's your favorite color?" She'd always regretted never asking Dad what his favorite color was before it was too late. She didn't have any reason to think she wouldn't be able to ask Keith later, but she thought she'd rather ask now.

That afternoon, after she had sewn the fully-quilted Dresden Plate block onto the rest of her quilt, she flipped through Mom's old patchwork book. It kept falling open to the front, where she'd tucked Keith's two letters, until finally she had to take the letters out and set them on the desk so that the book would stay open. Then she looked through the table of contents. She'd made so many of these before, and she wanted to try something new. There was a block with a star on it that she'd never tried before, with two different shapes of triangles instead of just the usual half-of-a-square ones. That ought to be fun, and a bit of a new challenge.

The block was called Arkansas Star, and maybe she had somebody from Arkansas in mind when she picked it out, but that didn't have to mean anything if she didn't want it to. (Did she want it to? She wasn't sure.)


	4. Log Cabin

That same week, Lisa called an assembly of all the citizens. She announced that she would be sending a delegation to Chicago: "Because we are not subjects, but an allied city, and can come and go as we please," she explained, "and because Chicago seems to be the center of knowledge currently, and as we continue to learn adult tasks and re-create society, we can always use more knowledge." At the end of her speech, when she asked for volunteers, many hands were raised right away. Cheryl's was among them.

Not everyone who volunteered was allowed to go, but Cheryl was one of the lucky ones that Lisa selected. It was to be a delegation of twenty, led by Charlie Harris. They would leave in a week. Until then, Lisa wanted them all to prepare to learn as much as they could in Chicago, and to make as good of an impression as they could.

Cheryl's mending shop was busy that week, as the delegates picked out their wardrobes and brought anything that wasn't quite right in to be fixed. In the spare minutes between mending, Larry and Iris were sewing something in purple, and Cheryl made sure not to look too closely as she suspected that it might be a gift for her. As for Cheryl herself, she packed her clothes, and a notebook and pencil for taking notes, and a small sewing kit since she was sure she'd want to sew while she was there. She went to the library and found a state history textbook, and read all the more recent history parts, and all the parts about Chicago.

When all that was done, she still had a little bit of time left—and Keith had sent her a thimble. She didn't have any "odd goods shops" next door to her like Keith had, and she wasn't really sure what he'd like either. But she could at least make him something nice. He'd complimented her sewing more than once, so she hoped he would like it if she sewed him something. She chose a log cabin block. She'd never made one before, but Grace had made a few for her own quilt and had seemed to enjoy them.

She hadn't had a letter back from Keith yet, so she didn't know what his favorite color was. So she put every single color she could think of into the block—a whole rainbow from red and orange all the way through to violet or purple or whatever you wanted to call it. She skipped indigo, though, since she'd never been able to tell what sort of color it was exactly and what made it different from blue other than the fact that it made the "Roy G. Biv" acronym work better.

When the patchwork block was finished, she found some plain muslin and sewed it into a pillowcase with the block on the front. She couldn't stuff the pillow with anything since they were supposed to travel light, but hopefully once she got to Chicago, either she could find some stuffing for it, or maybe Keith would have a pillow he was using that needed a fresh case.

By the evening before she was to leave, Cheryl was full of worries. What if Keith was just being friendly—or even worse, what if the King of Chicago had just ordered him to make friends with the inhabitants of Glenbard? What if they got lost on the way to Chicago? What if they were attacked by a roving gang or army? Hands in her pockets and mind in the clouds, she walked slowly back to her room for her last night in Glenbard.

"Surprise!"

All of her apprentices were there, and Steve of course, and a few of their neighbors. "We thought you deserved a going-away party," Steve said.

"We made you a present!" Iris burst out.

Cheryl grinned. "Well, I can't wait to see it!"

She retrieved a purple bundle—as expected, it looked very similar to the suspicious purple bundle that he and Iris had been hiding away whenever Cheryl got to close to them. Unfolded, it turned out to be a lightweight coat with plenty of pockets.

"We thought you'd probably want to carry some of your belongings with you, so you don't have to leave them in strange places where you don't know anybody, so we gave you lots of pockets," Larry explained. "There's even a couple hidden ones, here and here. And it wasn't hard to decide what color to make it in, because we know you like purple."

"I certainly don't make a secret of it!" Cheryl replied.

"Now, let's have a toast to Cheryl!" Steve said, handing around some precious Coca Cola cans he must have gotten from somewhere.

They didn't clink the cans together, because that might have made them fizz up too much and nobody dared lose a drop of irreplaceable soda, but they all said "To Cheryl!" and waved the cans vaguely in each other's direction.

It was the nicest party Cheryl had been to in a while. (It was the only party Cheryl had been to in a while.)


	5. Sears Tower

The history textbook had called Chicago "the birthplace of the skyscraper." Looking out a window on the forty-fourth floor of the John Hancock Center, Cheryl thought that skyscrapers had definitely progressed past being born, and at least into middle age. The skyline was full of them. (She wondered how long it would take humanity to get back to the point where they could build skyscrapers again.)

"Lydia and I got lucky, when the plague came," Keith explained. He'd been showing her around the building, but after climbing all those stairs, Cheryl's legs felt like jelly and she had insisted that they sit and do nothing for a while. The sky lobby had plenty of places to sit, so Keith had led her to a couch that faced the window, looking out over the city to their right and Lake Michigan to the left. He sat down on the couch next to her, and then he talked and talked, like he'd been wanting to tell all this to someone for a long time. "Our dad knew somebody...I think they played golf together, and he had an in with somebody here at the John Hancock Center. All the adults were freaking out, you know. The governor flew his kids in, and the mayor called his kids back from school. They called out the National Guard and commandeered Sears Tower. That's that building over there, you know."

"Yeah, my parents took me and Steve up to the observation deck the month after it opened," Cheryl said.

"Right, I forgot you've lived in the area for a lot longer than I have," Keith said. "So they stockpiled lots of food inside and barricaded the lower floors. It was mostly government officials' kids in there, and then the National Guard soldiers' kids because otherwise they would have mutinied. And an assortment of other people that their parents owed favors to, I suppose. It was much the same in this building, except here it was the owners of the building and some of the big businessmen who worked in the building that took it over. I'd never even met Mr. Dawson, who was the guy that got permission for us to stay here. But his kids were really little—they were a newborn, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old when the plague hit—and so he and his wife made a deal with my dad, that they would claim me and Lydia as family members as long as we took care of their kids."

"So you did?"

"Yeah. They're kind of like our little brother and sisters, so I guess the bit about being family members turned out to be true in the end. So anyway, life wasn't too bad for those of us inside the towers. I think it was pretty bad outside, though. But we just—we just never went outside, for months and months and months."

"So what happened then?"

"Douglas Brown happened. He was the governor's oldest son, and he'd grown up in politics since he was a baby. His dad had put him in charge of Sears Tower, and apparently he'd done a pretty good job of running things. Not trying to use force or intimidate people, but just manipulate things until he was the one who got things done that people wanted, so everybody who wanted anything had to go to him. So eventually, he decided that Sears Tower wasn't big enough for him, and he declared himself King of Chicago."

"What, he couldn't just call himself the mayor or the governor like his dad?"

"I think he may have thought that with so many gangs acting like it was the Dark Ages out here, that 'mayor' sounded too wimpy. He sent a deputation to our building and to the Standard Oil Building, and got everyone to agree to his leadership. He did it the same way he'd been conquering suburbs and outposts and miniature cities like yours since then. He offers very generous terms, which he can afford to offer because he's in control of more people and resources than any of the smaller leaders he's confronting. And the more people he controls, the more his apparent authority grows, so he doesn't mind that he's only loosely in control of the places he rules over. And it works okay for the rest of us, because now it's safe to go outside the tower. We can explore and find resources. I've been able to get so many more books for my library since the King opened up the towers, though it's a pain hauling them up the stairs. Before that, I'd had the library in an apartment on the twentieth floor, near the apartment I live in, but once we started bringing in more books, we moved it down to the fifth floor."

"So you started the library when you were all locked up inside here?"

"Yeah," he said. "I couldn't be very choosy about my books, back then. We collected whatever books the previous residents had left behind, but that was mainly novels and coffee table books. So then the governor of the tower ordered that each kid who had brought books when they moved into the tower could only keep three for their own personal use, and everything else had to be donated to the library. Some people didn't mind sharing, but some people were really upset to give up books that felt like their last ties to their lost homes and families. I had them all write their names inside the books, and as we've been able to replace them from other sources, I've tried to return some of the ones that seemed hardest for their owners to give up."

"How did you end up being in charge of the library? Was it something you chose to do, or were you assigned?" Cheryl asked.

"I kind of fell into it," Keith said. "The governor didn't really have us do much at first. He had assigned floor wardens for each floor, and some people to be in charge of food preparation and distribution, and then everybody over nine had to take a shift at guarding the first floor, even though nobody was likely to get through the barricades. But most of the time, we were just sitting around, and I got bored and ran out of books to read. We hadn't been able to bring much—even before all the adults had died, there had been a lot of rioting, especially around the towers because people wanted their kids to get in there too, so we hadn't dared to take more than one trip. I don't even know if my parents made it back to their home or to the hospital. The last time I saw them was on the pavement right outside the building, waving goodbye. But anyway. I didn't pack many clothes or much of anything else except books, and I had a backpack and duffel bag full, but by two months in I was rereading all of those for the third time, or reading the Dawson kids' baby books. So I went to the governor and got permission to get books out of all the abandoned residences. And then it just went from there. Are you ready to brave the stairs again?"

Cheryl grinned. "Going down ought to be easier than going up, right?"

"You'd think so," Keith said. "You can tell me whether you still hold that opinion when we get to the bottom." He led the way to the stairwell. "So how did you end up in charge of a mending shop?"

"Like you, I just fell into it," Cheryl said. "My mom had started to teach me to sew, in the week before the plague hit. After everybody died, I just kept sewing because I didn't have anything better to do. When we moved into Glenbard, Lisa assigned morning chores to everybody, and then she gave some people fuller duties on top of that, but she didn't give me any specific jobs. I ended up in the home ec room just because I was exploring the city and it seemed like a good place to work on my sewing, but then people started asking me to help with mending, and it just went from there. As more kids moved into the city and the little kids got older, Lisa assigned more and more kids to me to teach how to sew, until I had the seven that you met. Some of them are even better at sewing now than I am, I think."

"This is my floor," Keith said. "Do you want to stop off here, or shall we head down to ground level and I can show you around the city?"

Cheryl grinned. "As long as I can rest when we get to the bottom, I'm good to keep going."

"Great," he said. "We'll make sure you have a Chicagoan's leg muscles by the time you go back to Glenbard."

"I'll certainly never complain again about Glenbard's measly three floors."

"So when you're not mending, do you mostly work on your patchwork?" Keith asked. "The pillowcase you made looked really nice."

"I'm glad you liked it. Patchwork is my main hobby, though I've dabbled in some of the other crafts that my apprentices are studying. But mostly I work on my quilt. I'm making it out of lots of different patchwork patterns. I've been going through the book I brought from my mom's house, and making lots of different blocks from the patterns it has."

"Have you ever designed your own block?"

Cheryl shook her head. "Not yet. I've thought about it, but there hasn't been anything I wanted to make badly enough to figure out how to make it work. It just seems like so many of the possible patterns have already been invented. And a lot of the other ones have probably been invented, but I just haven't read about them yet because I don't have very many quilting books. Have you ever written your own book?"

"I used to write stories about astronauts when I was a kid," Keith said. "But I forgot all about them when we moved here. We got a typewriter a couple months ago, so now I've been working on writing up a historical account of what happened, so that future generations will know."

They had reached the lobby. Giant steel and concrete barricades still lined the building, but they had been pushed aside to provide a pathway in and out, now that the city was at peace, under the rule of the King of Chicago. "If you're up for a two-mile walk, we can go over to Sears Tower and you can see where the king holds court," he said. "Or you can wait, and you'll probably get to see it tomorrow when the king welcomes your delegation."

"Well, if I'll get to see that tomorrow, then why don't you show me somewhere else today," Cheryl said.

"We'll walk towards the lake, then," he said. "What was your favorite book when you were a kid?"

"I read a lot of mysteries. Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew, mostly. What about you? Were you reading stories about astronauts, or just writing them?"

They strolled on towards Lake Michigan, side by side.

* * *

The delegation was staying on one of the lower floors of the John Hancock Center. The king had offered to let them stay in Sears Tower, but Cheryl had agitated for them to accept the alternate offer of the John Hancock's guest floor. Charlie had liked the idea of having a little more physical separation from the king—of whom they were all still very wary, no matter how many times he said he didn't want much from them. And so it had been decided, and Cheryl got to stay in the same building as Keith and Lydia after all. After dinner, Keith brought the Dawson kids down to visit, and they all played Chutes and Ladders.

The days after that were filled with meetings with the king and his underlings, and more tours of the city given by people who knew all sorts of interesting facts about the city—and yet Cheryl didn't find them nearly as interesting to listen to as she had Keith. In the evenings, sometimes the Glenbard delegation held meetings, and sometimes they had free time to play board games with Keith and Lydia and the Dawsons. But throughout those day meetings and those evening meetings, and even a little bit of the time while they were playing board games, Cheryl was working on a new quilt block. She'd told Keith she'd never invented her own block, but after sitting in the John Hancock Center sky lobby, and then later standing on the Navy Pier looking back at the city, she'd finally had an idea. She cut out gray rectangles of different lengths, and then added a blue rectangle of the same width to each gray rectangle, so that each pair was a foot long. Then she sewed all the strips together—rearranging them over and over again until she was completely satisfied—and added more blue so that the whole thing was a square. It wasn't a perfect representation, but everyone she showed it to recognized it as Sears Tower. "Is that Lake Michigan in the background?" King Douglas asked at their final meeting.

"I had thought of it as a bright cloudless sky, but yes, it could equally well be the lake," Cheryl said.

"You do fine work, Miss Cole," he said. "I'm honored that you chose to represent my home with your craft."

Cheryl thanked him for his kind words, but it was Keith's opinion, later, that she valued more. "I finally got an idea to design my own square," she said. "And it was all your doing." She showed him the block. "Would you like to have it?"

"I think you ought to keep the first block you ever designed," Keith said. "But I'm honored that you would even consider letting it go. And it's lovely. But keep it, as a reminder of my hometown. You know you'll be welcome here in Chicago, any time you might want to come back."

Cheryl tucked the quilt square away in one of the many pockets of her purple coat. "I'm going to miss you," she said.

He leaned forward and gave her a quick hug. "I'm going to miss you, too. Please come back to Chicago someday."


	6. Chinese Coin

Glenbard seemed so much smaller than Cheryl remembered it. It was still a good place, with plentiful food and good teachers and strong defenses, but she found herself hesitating every time she started to call it a "city".

She remembered—it almost seemed like a dream—how Dad had used to tease Mom about how she was a city girl and he was a country boy, and when they met in the middle by buying a house in the suburbs, neither of them had ever been fully satisfied. "But we don't mind, because we've got you two," he'd always concluded, "and anywhere with a Cheryl and a Steve is better than either the city or the country without you."

Well, Cheryl was a Cheryl and she had a Steve, but she didn't have a Dad or a Mom anymore. She did have seven apprentices, though, all of whom greeted her exuberantly when she walked in the door of the mending shop. They'd stayed on top of all the work, too; there were only three pieces of mending currently in the shop, and all of them were half finished. "What do you even need me for?" she teased them. "I get the feeling any of you could run this shop just as well as me."

"Oh, don't say that," they all told her, but Cheryl felt certain her words were true. Well, maybe not some of the younger kids, but definitely Larry or Grace or Beth or Old Jenny, and probably Iris too.

She added the Sears Tower block to her quilt with two neat seams, then went back to her mom's trusty patchwork book to find a new block to make. She found herself drawn to the "Chinese Coin" block, where narrow strips of many different colors were stacked in tall columns, separated by bland solid background fabric. It reminded her of the skyscrapers of Chicago, with so much going on on all the different floors of the towers. She wondered what Keith was doing right now. "Iris, where did you put the scrap bag?" she asked. "I'm going to make a patchwork block that uses a lot of tiny pieces, so I don't want to waste big pieces on it."

"It's right here, catch!" Larry called, and heaved the muslin bag at her from across the room. "We just put a bunch of denim in there, so you'll have to dig past that if you want something lightweight enough for your quilt. What colors are you going to use?"

"Oh, all of them," Cheryl said with a smile.


	7. Dutchman's Puzzle

In the next delivery from Chicago, there was an encyclopedia of patchwork and quilting. Keith had finally found one! The accompanying letter held a note of triumph, which Cheryl felt was entirely deserved. Now she just had to come up with the perfect gift to send in response, especially since his seventeenth birthday was coming up.

She browsed through the bolts of fabric that filled the corner of the mending shop. Some were from that trip to Wards several years ago, and others from more recent trips to other shops further afield. Keith had told her that his favorite color was gray. Cheryl thought that was a ridiculous favorite color to have—were there any colors more boring than gray?—but someone's favorite color was their favorite color, and she wasn't about to tell him he needed to change it. So she looked for gray fabric. There was some lightweight calico with gray flowers (Keith didn't particularly like flowers), and a white-on-gray polka dot (she didn't know his opinion of polka dots, but she didn't think he seemed the polka dot type). In the heavier fabrics, there was a heathered gray wool. Heavier fabric would probably be better, anyway. Keith worked hard, and if she gave him something made in lightweight fabric, he'd have to leave it in his apartment during the day or he might accidentally damage it.

Maybe she should give him a bag that he could carry books in. He'd said how much work it was, hauling them up to the fifth-floor library. A book bag wouldn't do much good for the times that he got shipments of boxes and boxes of books at one time, but for the times that he only got a few books here and there, it would be easier than having to carry them in his hands.

She unwound a few yards onto her desk, and started measuring. Five or six inches deep, plus seam allowance—to make it strong enough, she should use a much larger seam allowance than she used on her patchwork quilts, maybe even 3/4"—and maybe a foot high. She decided to add a bit of black leather, for reinforcement and to add a little bit of visual interest, instead of just all that dull gray. They didn't have very much leather, just a few pieces of shoes and belts that had worn out, that they had saved to recycle instead of just throwing them out. But she wouldn't want to use much of it anyway, because it was so much tougher than fabric that she'd have to punch a hole for each stitch with an awl. Just a bit at the corners and the end of the straps would be good.

Even sewing the gray wool on the straight leatherless seams was tough. Cheryl had thought quilting through the seam of a patchwork square, where two or four thicknesses of cotton and a layer of batting all came together, was hard, but every stitch here took as much work as three or four stitches through a patchwork seam. She put Mom's thimble on one of her fingers and Keith's thimble on another, so that she could alternate which finger she used to push the needle through the thick fabric, and she took lots of breaks.

When the bag was done, it was very very tough and sturdy, and very very boring looking. Cheryl thought that the world ought to have more color in it, but she wanted Keith to have a bag he wouldn't be embarrassed by and that he would enjoy using. She thought this bag would fit that purpose. (But on the inside, where nobody would see it unless the bag was empty and they looked inside, she put a pocket for pens and pencils made from a patchwork square. Red and orange for the flag of Glenbard, and white and sky blue for the flag of Chicago, in a spiral of triangles.)

She sent a letter with the bag, telling Keith how much she appreciated the new book, and how much she missed him. Chicago seemed so terribly far away, but at least they could write letters to each other.


	8. Double Nine-Patch

Cheryl waited anxiously for the next supply run from Chicago, hoping that Keith had written back soon enough for this delivery to bring his return letter. When word came that the truck had arrived, she left Grace in charge of the mending shop, and hurried to the front gates. It would be good to stretch her legs, and that way she could be sure the letter wouldn't get lost.

There were half a dozen boys and girls on the truck. Now that all of the area that had once been Glen Ellyn was under the control of the King of Chicago, they no longer felt the need to travel in great numbers—though it still was safest never to go very far alone. A girl named Mary, whom Cheryl knew by sight because she was almost always the one with the mailbag, climbed out of the passenger seat and headed for the front gate.

Cheryl greeted her there. "Do you have any letters for me?"

Mary grinned. "There's a package for you on the back of the truck."

Cheryl hurried round to the back of the truck. "Keith!" she exclaimed, and laughed, running forward. "What are you doing here? I didn't expect to see you for ages! Mary said there was a package for me, but I thought it would be, like, another pile of books, not you yourself!"

Keith gave her a hug. "Well, actually, I'm not the package in question, I'm just the delivery boy," he said. "I loved the bag you sent me, by the way. Wait till you see what I brought you. Carl, can you give me a hand?"

Another boy hurried over, and together, he and Keith lifted an antique piece of furniture out of the truck. "It's...a sewing machine," Cheryl said. "Oh, is this one of those old sewing machines that they used back before there was electricity?"

"I believe it is," Keith said. "You just press on this treadle with your foot, and that provides all the impetus that the machine needs to move the needle up and down. Here, let's get this moved to your mending shop and I have to help unload the rest of the truck, and then I'll tell you more."

Cheryl followed them to the mending shop. As soon as they set the machine down, she set out to figure out how it worked, with all of her apprentices crowding round, excited for a chance to try it themselves. It seemed mere moments before Keith returned, having finished his other duties with the truck. "Look!" she told him, brandishing some scraps that she had sewn together. "I've got it all adjusted and figured out the tension, and I can sew a straight even line! Now I can actually try using it to make something!"

"So what's the first thing you're going to make on it?" he asked. "A patchwork block?"

Cheryl grinned. "You know me so well." She had already cut pieces out the previous day for a double nine-patch block. She might as well try sewing it on the machine. She fetched the bag of pieces from her desk and brought them over to the machine. "So tell me more," she said. "Where did this come from?"

He dragged a chair over and sat down next to her. "So, the king gave orders several months ago for abandoned houses to be cleared out all across the city, so that children can move into them. There's been an influx of immigration into Chicago from all directions, you know. Mostly people from the suburbs like this, but some people from further away. But he didn't want anything to go to waste, since it's still going to take many years—lifetimes, perhaps—before we get production up to pre-plague levels. So he had everything moved into various warehouses. I read in a history book that these sorts of sewing machines used to exist, and I thought maybe one might have ended up in a warehouse. So I went hunting, and I actually found two. It took a bit of trading, but I got permission to take possession of them, and to send one here to Glenbard."

"So where's the other one?" Cheryl asked.

"It's back in Chicago. I thought—well, I hoped you might like to come use it someday."

"You want me to come to Chicago?"

"You don't have to come now. Well, unless you want to. But here's the thing. I like spending time with you, and I can't move here. Glenbard's already got a librarian, and you don't need two. But I thought maybe someday you might like to come visit, or even to stay for a time. The world's growing again; you don't have to stay in one place all your life. You could come live in Chicago for a year, and then move back here to Glenbard. Or you could stay here and come to Chicago someday later. Or—or whatever you want, really. You don't have to decide right now. You can write me a letter. You're good at that. And—and I'd better go see where they've put us up for the night." He turned and hurried for the door, more nervous than Cheryl had ever seen him before.

"So, are you asking me to date you?" Cheryl called after him.

He turned around and leaned against the doorway, grinning slightly. "Only if you want me to be. You can come to Chicago and just be friends with me, and with Lydia and the Dawsons and everybody else, if you want to. But if you want to go out with me, I'd like that too." His cheeks were pink; Cheryl was pretty sure she was blushing too. "But you don't have to decide anything now," he said, and hurried out.

Cheryl's apprentices smirked and giggled, but she shook her head at them, and they didn't tease her or ask awkward questions. They were good kids. (Could she bear to move away and leave them?)

The sewing machine worked very well. Keith or a friend of his must have oiled it up before they brought it here, because everything moved smoothly even though it must have been sitting for years, in that abandoned house and then in the warehouse. The block came together faster than anything she'd sewn in years, almost as fast as those first two blocks she'd sewn years ago, when there had still been electricity. It was a more complicated block than anything she'd sewn in those early days, or else it would have been finished even faster. But instead of the regular plain nine-patch that had been her very first block, this current block was made up of nine squares—but five of those nine squares were also miniature nine-patch blocks themselves.

Cheryl remembered Mom's hands on hers all those years ago, guiding her hands as she moved the fabric beneath the needle. By the time the block was finished, she was crying in earnest. Sewing this quickly felt like getting a little piece of her old life back, after all these years. She set the block on her desk, on top of the rest of her quilt, and headed to her room to go to bed—but it was a long time before she went to sleep.


	9. Solomon's Puzzle

In the morning, her decision was made. The world was safe enough that she didn't have to stay here in Glenbard forever unless she wanted to. And maybe, down the line, she might decide that she wanted to come back and stay here; but for now, it was time to find out if she was a city girl like Mom.

Steve didn't seem too surprised when she told him. "I've seen the look in your eyes when you talk about your trip to Chicago," he said. "You couldn't stop talking about the city—or about Keith, either."

Cheryl shrugged. "I don't know where things are going to go with him," she said. "But I think I want to find out." She was packing her things while she spoke, quick little motions as she shoved clothes and papers into a few bags she'd scrounged up. "I'll be back someday, at least to visit," she said. "This isn't goodbye forever."

"But it's goodbye for now," Steve said. "I'm going to miss you."

Cheryl stopped packing and hugged him. "I'm sorry to leave you all alone," she said.

"Hey, I've got eight hundred residents of Glenbard here with me, and one hundred of them I'm personally responsible for. Don't worry about me being lonely."

Cheryl grinned wryly. "I will write, you know."

"Yeah, I know. You'd better not forget to."

Beth _did_ seemed surprised when Cheryl talked to her at breakfast, but only at the fact that Cheryl had chosen her over everyone else to put in charge of the mending shop. "But what about Grace or Larry or Iris?" she asked.

"They would all be great choices," Cheryl said. "Any one of them would be fully capable of running the shop. But as it happens, you're also a great choice. I thought about this a lot last night, and I decided I want you to be my successor." Beth started crying then, and Cheryl patted her on the back. "I'm sure you'll do great," she continued. "And if you have any questions, just write me a letter. There will be regular mail between Chicago and Glenbard, now, and maybe deliveries will even get more frequent as time goes on."

The truck driver wanted to leave by noon, so Cheryl didn't have very long to make all her goodbyes. The rest of her apprentices all cried as much as Beth had, and there were lots and lots of hugs as Cheryl packed up her quilt and the few other sewing supplies (and Mom's old patchwork book) that she was taking from the mending shop. Any other craft supplies she needed, she would find in Chicago.

Then there was one last stop: the old tower chamber where the girl who owned the city spent her days. "I've already heard you're leaving," Lisa greeted her. "We'll be sad to see you go. You've done a lot of good in Glenbard."

"Thanks," Cheryl said. "I've put Beth in charge of the mending shop. And we—well, they, I guess—have a sewing machine now, so they'll be able to get things done even faster. You probably will barely even notice I'm gone."

"Oh, I think people will notice," she said. "Good luck, Cheryl."

"Thanks, Lisa," Cheryl said. "Good luck to you, too. I'll come back to visit, I promise."

She left the tower and headed out to the truck. Steve and all her apprentices were waiting by the gates for one last hug all round. Then Keith gave her a hand up into the back of the truck, and climbed up next to her. It was time to leave the only home she'd known for years.

Cheryl waved and waved until the gates of Glenbard disappeared from sight. Then she reached into the pocket of her practical purple coat and pulled out her sewing. She was back to hand-sewing for this latest block, but it was full of curved seams that she would probably rather not sew on an unfamiliar sewing machine anyway.

Keith flipped back the flap of his gray wool book bag and took out a paperback novel. "Would you like me to read aloud?" he asked. "I brought a mystery, since you said you used to like those."

"I'm sure I still do," Cheryl said. "Go ahead."

"Okay," he said. He closed the bag and opened the book. "_In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times._"

Keith's voice rose and fell, Cheryl's needle went up and down, and the truck rolled on down the road. There were so many possibilities ahead of them. Cheryl wasn't sure what form her life would take after this new choice—the biggest decision she'd ever made—but she couldn't wait to find out.


End file.
